


Dumbledore and Shuttlecock

by Supernerdural



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Badminton, Brothers, Exhaustion, Family, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Male-Female Friendship, Murder, Poltergeists, Possession, South Dakota, Utah - Freeform, springfield - Freeform, zion national park
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 15:49:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19212592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supernerdural/pseuds/Supernerdural
Summary: During a lenghty sick leave, Anna Backman witnesses an unlikely murder at her badminton club. Following advice given to her by the late Bobby Singer before he died, Anna calls on the help of Sam and Dean Winchester. Together the three of them set out to help exonerate the murder suspect, the son of a great badminton legend, but there turns out to be more behind this tragic event than Anna thought.





	Dumbledore and Shuttlecock

Part 1  
The older I get, the more I'm thinking that perhaps Bobby Singer took a part of me with him when he died. I'm not saying we were close or anything, certainly not these past years. In fact, I think when he died, 5 years had passed since last I saw him. But there was a time when I rather went round to Bobby's than go home after school. 

Mom knew Bobby from high school. I know what you're thinking but no, they were not an item. Mom was already dating dad and Bobby was pretty difficult to get close to, even back then. When I was a kid, Bobby came to our house every now and then and mom took me to his a couple of times when there had been rumours of particulary gnarly monsters creeping around the city. "You'll be safe with Bobby Singer", she'd say. She didn't care that dad called him a drunk because Bobby was, in fact, a drunk. He didn't have any kids' stuff around the house so I ended up learning way too much about cars, weapons and whiskey.

Mom and dad started fighting when my younger sister came out stillborn. To be fair, at first they were both silent for 2 months, but that was actually worse. I was almost relieved when they started shouting at eachother. Nevertheless, I didn't want to spend more time than necessary at home and many days a week I'd go hang out at Bobby's. He wasn't always at home but he'd given me a key when he realized how bad it was. I was under strict rules as to what I was allowed to touch and what books I was allowed to read. Most of the time I just made myself sandwiches and watched TV. During those years I am absolutely certain that I loved Bobby Singer.

When I heard of his passing my world stopped. I had thought he was one of the institutions in this universe that would last forever. I had thought I had all the time in the world. Time to go around and see him, time to thank him. When John Winchester died a few years before, I actually did go back to Sioux Falls and I did see Bobby Singer. Not because I knew John Winchester myself, I had never met the man, but because Bobby was really close with him. And when I got there, I found Bobby further under the ice than ever and I wished to God I could have done something for him. I said as much but he just waved his hand: "John made a choice and he made the right one for once. We still have Dean". I didn't inquire further since I didn't believe to be any of my business.

Naturally, my mind went to the sons of John Winchester when the badminton racket started killing people. Until that day I had been deliberating within myself: am I crazy? What did I really see? Is there really any hunter business in all this? As it was, poor Mr Carruthers had to almost lose his entire head before I got myself together and made the call.

And by "the call" I mean "the calls". It took me close to 50 calls to get the current numbers for Sam and Dean Winchester. Why didn't I just go with any of the many hunters I knew personally? Because the last thing that Bobby Singer ever said to me was: "If you're ever in trouble, you call Sam and Dean". He didn't mention that I would have to call half the country to get in touch with them. Having never actually met these two gentlemen, I guess I did hesitate a bit too long.

"Hello?", answered a mildy bored voice.  
"Uhm, hi, is this Sam or Dean Winchester?", I asked.  
"No. Sam and Dean are dead, didn't you know?".  
"Yes", I said, "about 8 times over".   
The voice didn't answer immediately. Then:  
"Who is this?"  
"My name is Anna Backman and I was a friend of Bobby Singer's. He told me to call you if I was ever in trouble".   
The reply was impatient:  
"Did he give you this number?"  
"Have you had this phone that long?", I asked somewhat surprised.  
The voice ignored my question:  
"What do you want?"  
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and said:  
"A racket at my badminton club killed the janitor and I think it will kill again".  
The voice didn't hesitate.  
"Where are you and where is the racket?"  
"Harsteen, South Dakota", I hurriedly answered, "Both of us. I mean we're not together, the racket and I, I mean, there's-"  
"We'll be there tomorrow", the voice said and hung up.

Part 2  
Harsteen is a small town in South Dakota, apparently named by Swedish settlers who left the old country to avoid death by scurvy. Allegedly all they had were potatoes. Once you realize that so many people of the US population are decendents of starving Swedes, nothing surprises you anymore. However small Harsteen is, we actually have a very active sports culture. There's tennis and badminton clubs, two golf courts, the usual selection of gyms and yoga parlours, martial arts, orientation, mountain bike trails and a hockey club. Among the approximately 50 000 inhabitants of Harsteen, an estimated and baffling 15 000 individuals are active in sports. My badminton club has close to 400 members and 10 courts, 8 indoors and 2 outdoors. The official name of the club is "Harsteen Badminton Club" and the correct acronym is thus HBC. However, for as long as I can remember, it has been referred to as "The Badminton Club", or TBC, which was probably hilarious in the 80s.

Harsteen has managed to produce at least one very brightly shining star on the heavenly canopy of sports history: Margaret Southerly. 15 years ago she retired, still the undefeated world champion of women's single badminton. When she died 4 years ago from a stroke, a bronze statue was raised in her memory outside TBC. In her time she rivalled even Björn Borg for fame and her name was spoken with reverence on badminton courts worldwide. She had a mean and sneaky left hand smash, widely known as "the Suddenly", and having taken the first point you already knew she had the entire game in her pocket. She has two children, Terry and Sophia. Needless to say they were both greatly admired in school. Terry went on to try and honour his mother's legacy but Sophia left Harsteen early. Last I heard she was a journalist based in Seattle.

I instantly recognized the engine of a Chevy Impala humming through my kitchen window. On this Saturday in September the sun was shining and the birds were shirping away as if cheering on the maturing leaves and flowers that had been struggling for weeks to stay alive. The engine was cut and soon enough there was a knock on my door. I was more than a little nervous to be honest, the voice on the phone had been borderline rude and I did not feel up to handling moody men. Therefore I opened the door warily and took a step back.

The taller one smiled politely, his brown hair grown past his ears, his Bambi eyes twinkling and his Colgate commercial teeth blinding in the sunshine. His clothes all hung off him like a dust sheet on a skeleton model from school days long past. The shorter one wore his hair short and kind of spikey, very early 2000s, while his leather jacket probably hailed from the 1990s. He had a face as if chiseled from marble by God himself, but his grumpy expression and emotionless stare made me think that perhaps he had brain damage. 

"Sam", the unnecessarily tall one said and offered me a hand the size of a baseball glove. I took it and watched my own disappear in it.  
"Anna", I said down-heartedly.  
"This is my brother Dean", he went on and the baseball glove pointed in Grumpy's general direction. Grumpy gave me the shortest nod in recorded history and I surmized that this was the brother on the phone.  
"Why don't you come in?", I said and stepped back to open the door further.

Having offered 5 different types of liquids and 3 types of snacks, all around refused, I admitted defeat and sat down in the living room. Grumpy inspected every single one of my books minutely while Sam sat down opposite me in an easy chair.  
"So", he started immediately and looked straight at me. "Tell us how you knew Bobby".   
I told them the story about my mom and dad and Bobby and a little about when I saw him last. I left out the enigmatic comment Bobby had made on John's death being a choice and instead went on to explain that my parents are dead since a decade back, both from cancer.  
"What about this murderous sports equipment?", Grumpy hollered over his shoulder, halfway through the examination of my book cases.  
"Well-", I started, but was interrupted by Sam:  
"We're just getting to that, Dean. So, Anna, tell us about what happened at the badminton club".   
So I told them everything I knew about Margaret Southerly and then went on to describe the situation that tipped the scale and made me call them.

Part 3  
I play badminton every week with my colleague Emily. We normally book the same court every Tuesday, number 7. Terry Southerly, son of Margaret Southerly, usually practices on number 6. Terry and I have played at TBC for close to 10 years, so I have gotten to know his game pretty well. To be honest, Terry never came close to his mother's quality and people did their best not to look condecendingly at him as he walked off the court after practices and matches. When Margaret Southerly died, Terry didn't play for a full year. He literally didn't enter The TBC buildning. There was gossip of course: the trauma, the idol, the identity crisis, the grief. The fear of not being able to live up to his mother's legacy.

But then he came back. He was definitely rusty at first but man, oh man, after just a couple of weeks he played like he had been touched by the badminton Gods allover and not in a bad way. Everyone immediately recognized Margaret Southerly's racket in his right hand, aggressively flying back and forth above his head like a victorious banner in a violent storm. The gossip again: no longer in his mother's shadow, something to prove, pressure to achieve.

For three years now, Terry has been playing with his mother's racket and he is still getting better and better. He has been making the sickest moves, sometimes he looks almost unreal as he dances across the badminton court like a sneaker-wearing ballerina. Some petty minds has been calling his game "danceminton". Now, the fact that he was better could be explained. The fact that he was so much better could be tolerated. The fact that he hit a smash at world record breaking speed was absolutely outrageous. Or so I thought. People barely seemed to react anymore – the tempo of his improvement had been progressively speeding up, so why not?

Being biased by my upbringing I am not compelled to believe what I see. I know that there may be a fully supernatural explanation to Terry Southerly's rapid evolvement and to me, whatever that is, it's cheating. So it bothers me. So I've been watching him. So... I may have become just a smidge obsessed.  
"How obsessed?", Sam asked.  
"Well...", I cleared my thoat"... I may have hidden in a locker in the men's changing room to see if there was some funny business going on". Both Dean and Sam looked outraged.  
"Well, I NEVER", Dean burst out. Sam shifted his gaze and looked incredulously at him:  
"Have you not now?"  
Dean looked back at him:  
"Okay I may at some point have, but-"  
"Hey guys! It's not like I was there to peep, I wanted to see what he did to the racket", I broke in. Sam turned to me.  
"So, what did you see?"  
"While Terry was in the shower I saw the janitor walk in to cut the net of Terry's racket with a pair of wire cutters."  
"The late Mr Carruthers. And?", Dean asked.  
"That's when the racket strangled him. I suppose it was self-defense".

Mr Carruthers was a heavy man in every aspect of the word. He was a fat man, yes, but his breathing was heavy, his walk was heavy, his speech was heavy and his heart felt heavy. You could lose your mind waiting for him to answer a simple question. While waiting for him to fix a badminton net you could lose your patience, your hair and then finally die of old age. Visitors at TBC were always rolling their eyes at him behind his back and mimicking his walk. I refuse to take part in bullying so given the opportunity I have always tried to engage Mr Carruthers in conversation. This is how I learned that Mr Carruthers was incredibly rude. This is also how I learned that he hated Terry Southerly with the rage of a thousand suns. I mean, he loathed the guy. He made vague referrences to Margaret Southerly and in the end I deduced that there was an unnecessarily public rejection at the bottom of his hate-filled heart.

This particular Tuesday, Mr Carruthers had apparently decided that he was going to send Terry Southerly an anonymous message by sabotaging his mother's beloved and gold medal-winning racket. The wireclippers were sitting in the tool shed and seemed appropriate for the occasion, he was after all clipping a wire between mother and son. Or so he thought. As he stepped into the changing room, silently closing the door behind him, he looked around for Terry's things. I watched him in total surprise through the vents in the locker door, where I had hid to observe Terry. The unmistakable red racket case was hanging from one of the hooks and Mr Carruthers steered his steps towards it. He made sure he was alone, peering towards to shower room from where he could undoubtedly hear water running, and unzipped the case. He got the racket out but just as he raised the clippers to commence the mutilation, the racket quaked. It wasn't a vibration, it wasn't a shake. It was a quake, as if the racket had actually tried to throw his grip off. Mr Carruthers gave a start and stared at it for a few seconds. He then shook his head and fixed the handle under his arm to try again.

At this point, I was still clueless as to what was going on with the badminton racket of the late world champion Margaret Southerly. However, when the racket actually jerked itself out from under the arm of Mr Carruthers the janitor, rose into the air like some ridiculous spacecraft and proceeded to punch the man in the face with... well, itself, I instantly knew that Margaret Southerly was still in control of it. Not that I had much time to think. The racket went on to smack the unbelieving Mr Carruthers in the face yet again and finally it flew towards him and landed horizontally across his throat Mr Carruthers backed up against the wall, constantly trying to push the racket away. Just as I was about to open the locker and burst out to the janitor's rescue, I heard the voice of Terry Southerly from the door of the shower room:  
"Hey! What-", Mr Carruthers interrupted Terry's hollering with his gasps for air. Terry ran up to Mr Carruthers, wearing only his towel like a waist toga, grabbed the violently pressing racket and started pulling. He put his foot up against Mr Carruther's thigh and literally lifted himself off the ground pulling. When his towel dropped I realized I had to get out and help them both. But the locker door was locked! I started jerking it, banging on it and yelling through the vent.   
"Terry! Mr Carruthers! Let me out, I can help, please! Terry!"   
They were not paying attention to the shouting locker. Mr Carruthers had turned blue and his eyes were bulging. I heard Terry through my banging:  
"Mom! Stop it! Let him go, you're killing him! MOM!"

Part 4  
Sam handed me a paper tissue from the box on the table and looked at me empathically. Dean looked gripped by the story but seemed to have no sympathy for my sniveling. Sam started:  
"We understand that this must have been a difficult experience for you. Watching someone die is, well-"  
"He hasn't died yet", Dean interrupted him. "So far he's just choking. What happened after you heard Terry shouting at his mom?".   
I looked over at Dean.  
"Mr Carruthers died". I sniffed.  
"Right", Dean looked disappointed. "Now he's dead. And then what?"  
"Not much. Terry stared down at him and the the racket, as if he was frozen to the spot. I called his name but it was like he couldn't hear me. Suddenly Terry gathered his stuff, threw some clothes on and left the changing room".   
"What about you? How long were you stuck in the locker?", Sam asked.  
"Until Terry slammed the door behind him. Literally that same second my locker door just opened by itself. So I ran out too".

The Winchesters looked at eachother and then looked back over at me:  
"Poltergeist", they said as one, their voices void of doubt.   
"Yeah, tell me about it", I replied and leaned back in the sofa and closed my eyes. Mr Carruthers slumping body hovered before my inner sight. Poor man. He must have been so scared. Dean ended his pacing about the room by sitting down heavily next to me on the sofa.  
Sam handed me another tissue:  
"When was this, Anna?"  
"Yesterday. I went straight home and spent 4 hours trying to get a hold of your phone numbers. Then I called you immediately".  
"Cops?", Dean demanded. I cleared my throat.  
"Well, yes. They called me and I said I had already gone home when Mr Carruthers... there's no point telling them I saw him being suffocated by bewitched sports equipment. Unless...", I hesitated.  
The Winchesters both looked at me and raised their eyebrows, as if urging me to say what we were all thinking.  
"Unless... unless Terry Southerly is suspected for killing Mr Carruthers".

The backseat of Dean Winchester's Chevy Impala was cleaner than its owner. I caught myself trying to spot my reflection in the leather surface. The birds were all struggling to outsing eachother, the lukewarm rays of the sun reached down towards us through the branches of the trees as we cruised through the slumbering neighbourhoods of southwest Harsteen. Dean was playing The Doobie Brothers and for a second I forgot where we were going. In that sweet moment I was going nowhere with no one, just listening to the engine and the music and the birds, somehow so in tune with the entire universe. I had been so tired lately, the simplest activities seemed daunting, unclimbable mountains, the thought of which drained me of what little energy I posessed.. I thought to myself that falling asleep right now wouldn't harm anyone.

"Why is it called 'badminton' anyway?", Dean asked, suddenly pulling me out of my meditation.  
"Well", I started and sat up straight, "Apparently it's named after a mansion or some sort of estate in the UK, Badminton House, belonging to the Duke of Beau... something, something", I explained expertly.   
"Figures", Dean replied.  
"Mind you, there was a time when it was called 'Battledore and shuttlecock'", I went on. Dean chuckled:  
"Hey, Sammy! You're a nerd, isn't that the old guy in Harry Potter?"  
"... you mean Dumbledore?", Sam looked bored.  
"Why, are you mad at him or something?"  
"What -"  
"Wait, did you say 'shuttlecock'?", Dean shouted and looked at me in the rearview mirror, "As in 'shuttle'... and 'cock'? 'Shuttle-cock'? Like a space shuttle... only it's a-"  
"It is a plastic cone-shaped projectile with a heavier rubber nose", I sighed. "Except when you play matches, then it's made of actual feathers instead of plastic".  
"Why would I be mad at Dumbledore? He's a fictional character!", Sam shouted.  
Dean chuckled again:   
"Shuttlecock! Who's up for a ride on the shuttleco-"  
I broke in:  
"Can we focus, please? A man is dead. And at the hands of a... well not the hands of a racket, but possibly the hands of a... the dead hands.. the ghost hands of Margaret Southerly, no less. Possibly. By the way, did the poltergeist of Margaret Southerly simultaneously choke the janitor and push my locker door shut? And mute all sounds coming out of it?".  
Sam, still giving his brother a confused look, said absent-mindedly:  
"Poltergeists are unpredictable, it's their nature. You never know what they're capable of. Dean, what do you mean am I mad at Dumbledore?"  
As the brothers bickered I leaned back onto the seat, trying to relive the moment where I forgot I was going to TBC to investigate further the violent murder of Mr Carruthers, janitor and saboteur.

Part 5  
It didn't happen for me. Instead the hoarse voices and Messrs Winchester and Winchester filled my head with nonsensical arguments on wizard names and racket sports all the way to the club. Once there, you'd think they would give it a rest. This didn't happen for me either.   
"Have you even read the books?", Sam asked, scandalized.  
"Have I WHAT?", Dean replied, equally scandalized, as he closed the door of the car.  
"I'm just saying that you are judging an entire genre of litterature on a series of books you haven't even read!", Sam went on.  
"Well, are they worth reading? Do you recommend them, Sam? Are you seriously telling me that you want me to sit down and read TWI-"  
"GUYS!", again I interrupted the bickering, "We are not dealing with vampires here! Or werewolves! Or mormons! There is something much more sinister at work here, so can we concentrate on the racket?"   
Sam and Dean gave eachother looks as if to say they were pausing, not ending, their disagreement and I led my companions into the Badminton Club.

The smell of sweaty rubber and small town-frustration filled the foyer. I was used to it and Sam didn't care but Dean flinched and put his hand over his nose and mouth. Sam made a face at him meaning "act natural" and Dean mimicked back that his reaction was in fact entirely natural. I suddenly realized that we had absolutely no plan. How were we going to find anything out? Just as I was turning around to voice my doubts to Sam and Dean, a whisper reached my ear from the front counter:  
"Hey, psst!"

It was Ralph. My spontaneous response, as always at the sight of Ralph, was to emotionally vomit. He had the smile of an over-salaried track horse and I had wondered sometimes whether those mountenous teeth were like gills to him, seeing as how he was constantly flexing them. I thought to myself that perhaps that would make him a sea-horse as I walked over just to politely try to get away again.   
"Did you hear?", he whispered further and looked around as if he was expecting to be eaves-dropped on.  
"About Mr Carruthers?", I asked in a subdued voice.  
"Yeah!", he almost spat, "The old sloth. The police says he was murdered".  
I shrugged, not knowing what to say.  
"With a racket", he continued and my heart sank. Of course the police could guess the murder weapon, what had I been thinking? I turned around and looked at Sam and Dean who were silently waiting for me.  
"Oh. So Laurel and Hardy are here with you?", Ralph sneered.  
"What?"  
"Scar and Mufasa", he went on, nodding towards the brothers, "Gomez and Lurch. Friar Tuck and Little John. Thelma and Louise. I can tell from here they're as educated as a pair of stick insects".  
"Said the sea-horse", I heard myself retort under my breath.  
"Say again?", Ralph leaned forward.  
"Nothing", I said and shook my head, "What else have you heard? It's just, I know people didn't like Mr Carruthers and all that but I kind of felt sorry for him, you know".  
"What was there to hear? The cops made a brief business out of inspecting the changing room. It's in use already today, only the day after. If you ask me, the old guy croaked from a heart attack as he was working himself up to clip Southerly's racket". 

I nearly jumped.  
"Was that was he was doing in there?", I asked, as if I hadn't been stuck inside a locker, watching it happen. Almost happen. Ralph smiled his breathing smile and nodded conspiratorily.  
"You better believe it, the cops found the clippers next to the body. Didn't you know he held an age-old grudge against Mama Southerly, not only sports pro but also mega-babe and heartbreaker extraordinaire? My my, you have been under a lid, haven't you?".  
I acted outraged but I may have overdone it because Ralph leaned even closer and went into a whispering frenzy:  
"Apparently, the cops think that Terry caught old Carruthers at it and, as he is one hundred percent Norman Bates-obsessed with mommy dearest, he blew a fuse and charged at the janitor and killed him stone dead by strangling him with the racket".  
At this I let my jaw drop but lost my focus and asked:  
"Did the cops really make the Psycho-reference?" and regretted it instantly.  
"Of course not", Ralph rolled his eyes and stood back up, "Don't be facetious".  
I struggled to say something that would bring me back into Ralph's confidence.  
"So", I started, "... okay so the cops say murder, you say heart attack. What is the popular opinion at TBC?".  
Ralph whiped some imaginary specks of dust off the counter and raised his eyebrows.  
"Dunno. Murder I guess. I just think it sounds unbelievable that Terry Southerly, every muscle in his body being the result of playing badminton and being a twirp, should be able to force a lifelong janitor of megalodonic proportions up against a wall and strangle him with an 86 gram racket".  
I took a deep breath and asked hesitantly:  
"Do they have any proof then? The cops I mean? To their theory? About Terry?".  
Ralph smiled triumphantly.  
"You mean except his wet towel on the floor and a footprint-shaped bruise on Carruthers right thigh?".

Part 5  
"So what did Horse Mouth say?", Dean asked as I dragged my feet back towards him and Sam.  
"The cops are finished in the changing room", I sighed, "and they found Terry's towel on the floor. Apparently also his footprint on Carruthers' thigh. And it seems that the popular opinion around town is that son of badminton pro caught janitor trying to sabotage racket and said son of badminton pro then strangled said janitor with said racket". I hid my face in my hands and contemplated the irony of having witnessed the murder suspect trying to save the victim from being murdered and not be able to speak out because no one will believe the truth. Unless...

"Can't I just tell the cops that somebody else came into the changing room, a real person that is, and strangled Carruthers while Terry tried to stop them?"  
Dean didn't seem to have heard me, gazing towards the doors of the changing rooms. Sam put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes.  
"Anna, I know you want to help Terry. But think about it; who else would have a motive for killing Carruthers? Why did Terry disappear? And why, very much why, were you hiding in a locker in the men's changing room? And regardless of why you were there, why didn't you step in when you saw what was happening? There are just too many unanswerable questions for you to face if you go to the police with this".  
Under the weight of Sam's empathic gaze I had to admit that there was nothing but desperation behind the idea of talking to the cops. So I too looked towards the changing rooms and sighed again.  
"Now, Dean and I are going to have a look around and then check out the men's changing room. You however, have spent enough time in there, so why don't you see if you can find someone else around who has something to say?"

I watched as the brothers walked away along the walls of the badminton hall, sometimes stopping and pointing at nets and lines and the ceiling as if they were deciding whether to start playing there or not. I kind of liked Sam at this point, although I had only known him two hours. He was understanding and patient, he'd seen nerves like mine before and he didn't judge. I wasn't sure about Dean though. Don't get me wrong, if he had been borderline rude on the phone, he was flat out rude in person and I never could tolerate a rude man. But somehow I was convinced that he wasn't trying to be rude so much as he was actively trying to keep people away, and that's a sermon I can hail with an "Amen". I had been losing people for 15 years and was determined now to live as emotionally isolated as possible. I was all about keeping distance.

I circled the badminton hall and the outdoor courts. I stopped to chat to a few people but didn't find out anything valuble. There was a widespread outrage at Terry for disappearing without a trace when obviously he should have marched straight out of the changing room and down to the southwest presinct of Harsteen's police constabulary. Apparently that's what everyone at TBC would have done if they had murdered Mr Carruthers. Which of course they would never do because he had been such an angel, underneath that rough demeanor that is. And of course there were a lot of other people who hadn't liked him but literally nobody had been involved in the bullying themselves.

I thought about Mr Carruthers and realized I didn't know his first name. John? Jason? What kind of life did he lead outside his job? Where did he live? What did he do in his spare time? I thought of him as lonely but he may very well have been married.

"There was something else Ralph said", I suddenly remembered. We were back in the Impala, Sam and Dean hadn't made much headway at TBC and we had decided to go back to my place and regroup.  
"Who said?", Dean asked from the driver's seat.  
"Horse Mouth".  
"Oh, him. What did you hear from the Horse's Mouth?"  
"How did Terry overpower Mr Carruthers? Terry is tiny and Carruthers was a big man".  
Neither of the brothers replied at first. After a minute, Dean tilted his head back a little.  
"How big?"  
"What?"  
"How big was Mr Carruthers? And how tiny is Terry?"  
"Terry is a sack of bones and Carruthers was a majestic whale of a man".  
The brothers looked at each other.  
"That's good. That's...", Sam nodded to himself. "We can use that".

Part 6  
I lost focus only when Dean walked into the kitchen wearing a black suit. He had done something to his hair and all in all he looked positively adult. As he fiddled away with his tie and the FBI-badge I tried to find something to say so as to employ my brain instead.  
"Uhm.. uh... so... how... I mean, have you... done this much? Impersonating federal agents?"  
"Yep".  
"Okay, so... you're not going to get caught then?"  
"Nope".  
"But what if you do? Get caught, I mean".  
"Never happened".

At this point I was more annoyed than distracted by the living marble statue before me and had to note that my strategy to refocus had worked.   
"Okay, great. So you'll just waltz in there and say-"  
"What's going on?"  
Sam really was unnecessarily tall. He filled the entire doorway. He also looked like a teenage James Bond in the suit he was wearing and I couldn't help smiling to myself.  
"I sent you the photos of Terry and Mr Carruthers that I found on the TBC website", I said to not answer his question. Sam and Dean moved closer together while Sam took out his smartphone and browsed the pictures. They were silent for a minute and then Sam said:  
"Wow, you weren't joking. Terry is a sack of bones".  
"And Mr Carruthers was indeed majestic", Dean interjected, lifting his eyebrows. "You'd have to be He-Man to strangle this guy!".   
"So what's the plan?", I asked.  
Sam cleared his throught:  
"We go to see the investigating officers and we claim to suspect that Mr Carruther's demise is linked to an interstate wave of unusual murders. We will carefully map out what their theory is as to the chain of events. If they have doubts concerning the guilt of Terry Southerly we will underbuild that and offer our insights. If they are of the opinion that Terry is in fact guilty we will put on our smuggest senior officer-faces and ask them how they suggest that Terry Southerly, 120 pounds soaking wet, managed to strangle to death Mr Carruthers, a man who could send Terry flying by sneezing in his general direction. Simple".  
Dean nodded his approval.  
"Okay, what can I do while you're out?", I turned to Sam.  
"Try to figure out where Terry might be hiding. Check out his social media-accounts, talk to his friends if he had any. The police will already have checked all the obvious places like his home, his mother's home, any fishing cabins or overnight apartments the family may have had. So it's up to you to find the not so obvious options".  
As the brothers left the house I went online and immediately started trying to find everything out about Terry and Margaret Southerly.

Terry hadn't updated his social media-accounts in a long while. It looked as if his mother's death put an end to his life online 4 years ago and there was nothing interesting however far back I scrolled into his account history. Typing "margaret southerly" into online search engines felt like looking for a glass of water spilled into an ocean. I decided to do so anyway and spent about 30 minutes reading about a career I already knew so much about. There were interviews and pictures of the family during outings to both local points of interests, such as Mount Rushmore and East Vermillion Lake, and trips furhter away like Paris and Hong Kong. I nearly passed out from boredom when my cellphone started ringing. It was Sam.

"The cops found Terry's keys in the changing room, he must have dropped them as he ran out. He had a keyring on his chain from Zion National Park, Utah. It looks old, maybe a keepsake from a family holiday?"  
"I'm on it".  
"And Anna..."  
"Yes?"  
"The police are taking into consideration that Terry may not have had the physical strength required to overpower Mr Carruthers.. it's just, they didn't find the racket and assume he must have taken it with him. And there's just nobody else-"  
"I know".  
"- and since he keeps away, there's-"  
"Yeah".  
"I just want you to-"  
"Sure".  
"Anna..."  
"Sam?"  
"I just wanted to say, that if Dean seems a bit grumpy-"  
"Uh-huh?"  
"It's because-"  
"Because he was raised in a barn by scarecrows?"  
Sam chuckled.  
"Yeah, anyway, we're going to the morgue to have a look at the late Mr Carruthers. We'll call you when we're done".

Part 7  
After about 15 minutes of going through even more articles and interviews about and with Margaret Southerly, I found a photo of the entire Southerly family taken in Springdale, Utah, 4 minutes by car from Zion National Park. They were sitting in a coffee shop called Oscar's. According to the interview the family was staying at a hotel called Springdale Black Lodge. Worth a shot, I thought to myself and picked up my phone.

To no surprise, the hotel wouldn't disclose whether a certain guest was or was not staying with them at this time. So I asked them to tell Mr Southerly, if indeed they had a person by that name staying with them, to call Anna Backman at his earliest convenience and that I was calling about a matter of life and supernatural death.

I wondered how fast the police would figure Springdale Black Lodge out as a possible hiding place for Terry. Should I call all the other hotels of Springfield and leave the same message? If I did, would the hotel staff inform the cops when they called that there had been somebody else asking about Mr Southerly as well?

Within 10 minutes, my phone rang. Springdale Black Lodge was calling back.   
"Anna", I answered, my heart pounding in my chest.  
"Anna? It's... it's Terry".  
"Terry! Oh my god, Terry, how are you? What are you... you're in so much trouble!"   
Terry sounded tired and sad:  
"Tell me about it".

The only reason Terry called me back, he said, was that I had told the staff that it was a matter of life and "supernatural" death. This had kindled a desperate hope in him that I had some insight in what was actually going on. When I, very embarrassed, told him how I had witnessed the whole situation from inside an apparently enchanted locker, where I had hid to find out whether he was cheating, Terry burst out:  
"Thank GOD! Even though the police will never believe me, at least now I know you will".

The story Terry had to tell was both gripping and heartbreaking. It had taken him half a second to realize what was going on in the locker room as he came out of the shower. He had spotted the wire clippers first and when he saw Mr Carruthers fighting for his life, it was obvious that his mother was misguidedly protecting her son's success.  
"I never even liked badminton, Anna, can you believe it? When mom was alive, she was bad enough hounding me to practise, but when she died and started living through that cursed racket it got unbearable", Terry explained. 

When Margaret Southerly died, her son had become very depressed. His relationship with his sister had never been strong and Sophia, living in Seattle, hadn't spoken to their mother in years. He felt lonely and hopeless. He instantly stopped playing badminton, which was in fact a relief. During the time that followed his mother's passing, Terry had had no energy to deal with her things and just threw everything into a storage room in his house. One of the things she had left him was her badminton racket, which perhaps was the most painful artifact he now owned, reminding him both of his late mother and his deceitful disinterest in the sport she lived and breathed. For almost an entire year, her old stuff filled up that space, weighing on his conscience. Her car sat silently in the driveway next to his own for 6 months, until finally he asked a neighbour if he could store it temporarily in their carport until he had the energy to sell it – he just couldn't bear seeing it everyday. The neighbours still hadn't complained about it, Terry said, although the car was in fact still sitting in their carport now, 4 years later. 

When Terry started hearing noises from the storage room where he kept his mother's old belongings, he thought perhaps there were mice or even rats in there. He had exterminators out a few times but they found no animals and no traces of any. He then went online and read about loss, depression and anxiety and decided that he was probably manifesting his feelings of grief and remorse towards his late mother through these noises. But that explanation just wouldn´t do. When things unexplicably started falling over, switching places and actually breaking in there, he started to get scared. Every time he opened the door to that particular room, regardless of where he had placed it the previous time, his mother's badminton racket was lying on the floor just inside the door. Somewhere deep in his mind he knew that Margaret Southerly was haunting her old racket but he couldn't admit it to himself.

Soon enough he knew he had to act. He threw the racket away, put it in a garbage bin. The day after, he found it sitting outside the door of his house. He went to a recycling station and put it in one of the containers. When he came home, there it was again. Terry described how he felt like he was going out of his mind. This time he just stepped over it and went inside the house. He locked all the doors and windows and went to bed at 2 pm and slept until the next morning. When he woke up, for a sweet minute he thought it had all been just a bad dream. Until he came down to the hallway and noticed his old sports bag sitting by the front door, as he used to leave it so as not to forget to bring it to work in the morning. And just as before, Margaret's racket in its cover was sticking out from inside the bag.

This time, Terry didn't get scared or confused. He got angry. He started shouting at the bag, like a madman, asking the racket what it wanted from him, what was he supposed to do? The racket didn't reply, obviously, but there was no need. Terry knew that his mother wanted him to pick up playing badminton again. So out of desperation, he did. He thought that if he obeyed his mother for a while then maybe she would be appeased. It turned out though, that he could not make her happy, not even in death. He would play for a couple weeks and then put the racket in the storage space again. Within days, the mayhem would start all over. One time the racket actually punched a hole in one of the walls. Terry would try to grab the racket, planning to smash it to pieces with his bare hands, but find that it suddenly weighed at least 200 pounds and that he couldn't lift it.

Terry could think of nothing else to do but to play. And to his shame, he admitted that the longer he played and the better he became, the more he liked it. He knew in his heart of hearts that he was cheating; he wasn't good, it was his mother. She was playing him through the racket. She was the one who moved in the right directions, she was the one who smashed the inofficial world record, she did it all. When talent scouts started to hover, Terry imagined a future as a pro, the son and heir of the great Margaret Southerly. His thoughts were somewhat vindictive, finally he would have some use of his mother. God knows she hadn't been very loving in life, so why not let her make him money in death?

"As you can imagine, my musings were quite violently interrupted when she deicided to kill Mr Carruthers. I know he was going to clip the racket and I wish I had caught him before it was too late. Had I been a little more alert, Mr Carruthers would be alive today".  
I didn't know what to say. Of course it wasn't Terry's fault, but I couldn't see who else's it was either. I was no expert on poltergeists, but I assumed that they could not in fact be held responsible for their actions. Terry went on;  
"Anyway, when I realized that Carruthers was gone, I literally lost it. My mind was blank, I didn't know what to do. Eventuelly, as of course you know, I snapped back and hurried away in a panic. I didn't realize I had dropped my keys until I came home after running all the way there. I thought about all the places I could hide but all of them seemed like places where the cops would find me. I needed think about what to do, no one would believe me if I told the truth. Suddenly I came to think about the Jennings, my mother's friends who own the Springdale Black Lodge. I called them and they agreed to sign me in here under a false name. I haven't slept and I can't eat. Honestly Anna, I am so glad you called me even though I know there's not much you can do to help me".

Part 8  
Au contraire, I explained to Terry, I had already started. I told him briefly of my upbringing, of Bobby and Sam and Dean and I told him we were doing everything we could to get him out of this entire mess. At this point, Terry started crying. Out of relief, I assumed, and I went on to tell him that Sam and Dean were at the morgue right now and that they had spoken to the police under the guise of FBI agents. I hesitated but then decided to tell him that the police were still pretty convinced that he was guilty. I told him about the towel on the floor and his footprint on Mr Carruther's thigh. After being silent for half a minute, Terry said:  
"I am so grateful to you Anna, I can't believe you've done all this on my behalf. What do you think I should do now?".

In that exact moment, the Winchesters walked through the door. I leaped up and violently pointed towards my phone and mouthed: "TERRY". Dean snatched the phone out of my hand.  
"Mr Southerly? This is Dean Winchester, currently of the FBI. Has Anna informed you of the situation?"  
I assumed that Terry replied that I had because Dean went on:  
"It's the opinion of Sam and myself that you should come back to Harsteen and report to the police that you found Carruthers dead but that you didn't killed him".   
Pause.  
"I know, you have to tell them the footprint on his thigh is from when you went up to him to check if he was still alive".   
Pause.  
"God no, of course they won't believe you, but at least you'll be acting half right and with you in a cell, we won't have to worry about a town mob with torches and pitchforks coming to roll you in tar and feathers, or worse".  
Another pause.  
"Let's put it like this, your highness, Sam and I are not actually even here to help you. We're here to arrest and incapacitate a murderous badminton racket, for which you are responsible, and I will not hesitate to throw you overboard and just get this whole thing over with so I can go home and go back to eating midnight sandwiches and watching Magnum PI. I don't spend my life chasing ghosts, literally, to keep self-centered jerks like you from going to jail. Anna has busted her ass since you got yourself into this nightmare and you tell me you don't want to go to jail? You know what? I didn't want to go to Harsteen, but here I am, cleaning up your mess. If you think that I will stand here and -"  
Sam grabbed the phone out of Dean's hand and shout-whispered:  
"Enough!".  
He gave the phone back to me.  
"Terry?".  
"I'm coming".

Part 9  
Dean insisted on getting to bring Terry to the police himself and tell them that they found him through unofficial channels that the FBI curates fastidiously. Sam said that it was acually not a bad idea but they absolutely had to emphasize that they believe Terry's version of events. Dean looked as if he had wanted to tell the cops that Terry had confessed to the murder of Mr Carruthers, but he didn't say anything.

Having Terry driving himself in his own car all the way from Springdale back to Harsteen was out of the question, seeing as how there were APB's out on both car and driver. It was decided that Sam and Dean were going to drive to Casper, Wyoming and meet one of the Jennings driving Terry towards Harsteen. An approxiamately 20 hours drive there and back again, but Sam just shrugged.   
"It's all we ever do anyway. Drive".

My phone rang at 7 am the next day.  
"He doesn't have it".  
I looked at my watch and I looked around the room. Okay, so I'm at home, in my bed, I've slept all night. But who's that on the phone?  
"Who's that?", I asked.  
"Are you drunk? Not that I judge."  
"Oh, Dean. Sorry, no you woke me is all. Who doesn't have what?"  
Dean sighed.  
"Terry doesn't have the racket".  
Suddenly the entire situation came crashing down on me and to not fall out of bed I had to lay down on my back. The death of Mr Carruthers, the disappearance of Terry Southerly. I had dreamt of it, I had lived it even in sleep. Why had I been so convinced that he had the racket? Because it was nowhere else. It wasn't in the locker room, it wasn't with the police. And the police had search for it everwhere, surely.  
"Oh God", I sighed. "Where are you?"  
"We're in Wall, trying to get Terry Skellington to eat a sandwich. We can't have him starving to death in the Impala, it would make our arrival at the police station a lot less heroic. Oh, and the Founding Fathers send their love".

Dean thought they would be back around noon. They'd stop by at my place for showers and to change into suits and then haul Terry to the station. Having been an eyewitness to the supernatural death of Carruthers the janitor, I decided to try and help Terry with his statement to the police by trying to figure out answers to questions like: If somebody else came into the locker room and strangled Carruthers, how come you didn't hear anything? You must take some long showers if someone is able to kill a man during that time... almost as if you knew it would happen...?

I mean, obviously, when you shower you traditionally get water in your ears. Sounds coming from a locker room 20 feet away would have to be both loud and strange indeed for anyone to think there was something untoward going on. As for the length of the shower itself, Terry could not have been in there more than 5 minutes as it was. Thus we should only have to add another 5 minutes of showering time to explain how he missed the entire murder of a man, time during which Terry had in reality tried to save Mr Carruthers from been killed. 10 minutes in the shower after badminton practise was hardly overkill.

But what if the cops thought Terry was in cahoots with a second party to end the life of the janitor? Employing help to kill someone would mean it was planned. That's first degree murder. In South Dakota, that's the death penalty. My heart suddenly went cold. Maybe handing Terry over to the cops wasn't such a good idea after all. Then again, how do you plan a murder of a man in a place you can't know he will be at, where he came to do something you couldn't know he will do? Could the police possibly argue that Terry had somehow provoked Carruthers particularly that day to get him into the locker room to mutilate the racket? Or could Terry, perhaps with the assistance of his hypothetical helper, even have planted the idea of clipping the racket, so as to really steer Carruthers onto that path? According to Sam and Dean, who had been to see Carruthers at the morgue, there was absolutely no doubt as to what had happened to him. The red mark across the janitor's throat fully screamed "STIFF NARROW INSTRUMENT, SIMILAR TO SHANK OF BADMINTON RACKET". And seeing as how Terry, according to the theories of the police, had taken the racket in question with him when he fled, the whole situation looked grimly bleak.

I felt utterly defeated by the possibility that Terry could end up on death row because of his overbearing mother. It wouldn't be the first time that happened, surely, but this time the suspect was in fact innocent of the crime. Having seen it with my own eyes had become a curse that haunted me day and night. The past three days felt like they had been going on for weeks and I had now reached a level of exhaustion I didn't think humanly possible outside a coma. 

The engine of the Impala didn't stir me but the noises in the hallway woke me up. I lifted my head from the kitchen table and felt a stabbing stiffness in my neck and shoulders. Sam and Dean had come back with Terry. I rose so fast the chair fell over backwards and I hurried out of the kitchen. There he was. Tall, slouchy hair, hipster beard and puppy eyes. Bones so sharp you'd think they could pierce his skin from within. He looked even skinnier now, haggard even.  
"Anna", was all he said and we met in a hug.  
"I'm so sorry", I whispered into his shoulder.  
"Do you know how glad I am that you suspected me of cheating?", he replied and I chuckled unwillingly.

We all sat down to eat a hurried lunch before getting Terry to the presinct. I could tell Dean's mood had not improved by the almost 24-hour trip to pick him up. I suddenly remembered his acknowledgement of my ass-busting to help Terry when they were on the phone, and I couldn't believe I had forgotten. Hadn't Sam and Dean been working even harder than I? Dean the hardest, probably, seeing as how he seemed to constantly be fighting the urge to punch Terry in the face and drive off back to where they had come from.  
"I just want to say", I started, as the others were all chewing their food silently, "that I'm just so grateful to you, Sam and Dean, I could never have done anything for Terry by myself".  
Terry looked down and nodded in agreement to his plate.  
"It's what we do", Sam replied with a slight smile. "No need to thank us".   
Dean scoffed and rolled his eyes. I looked at him.  
"Dean, I can't imagine how hard you work-"  
"Yeah"  
"- it's not easy for you, surely-"  
"Uh-huh"  
"- and -"  
"Whatever".  
I stopped mid-breath and stared at him.  
"You know what, Dean Winchester?", I was in a fury now and put my fork down on the plate unnecessarily hard. "What I'm trying to say, is that I am grateful to you for swallowing whatever this reluctance is that you keep holding back and I can't imagine what it's like for you, living the life that you live. But Terry here is a human being like the rest of us and he has not only lived with an unloving and pressuring mother, but then she had the audacity not only to die, but to start haunting her old crap and forcing him to live a life he didn't want, in order to have him still obey her even as she lays in ashes at the memorial park! I don't know you very well but I know enough to realize that you have probably lived a more difficult life than that and I am sorry, truly. But you have to understand and rememeber that this is the first time Terry has come in contact with anything even remotely supernatural, isn't it Terry?"  
Terry nodded in silence.  
"So please", I went on, "can you try a little harder to behave civilized, at least around Terry?".

Dean looked at me, then he looked at Terry and for a minute he didn't say anything.  
"We're not far from Sioux Falls", he replied at least. "It's too close to Bobby and it wrecks my heart. Because he's not there. I don't get to forget, even for one second in this place, that Bobby is gone forever and that I miss him more than I thought a human could ever miss another".  
Terry looked at Sam. Sam looked at Dean. Dean looked at me. I hid my face in my hands and listened to the mournful silence that followed. The birds weren't chirping. Nobody moved.  
"I know", I whispered into my palms. "It kills me too".

Part 10  
It turned out that Terry had lost sight of Margaret Southerly's badminton racquet the second he decided to run out from the locker room. He had had one thought in his mind and that was to get away. He didn't have a clue as to where it might be now. We discussed the problems I had been trying to solve for Terry's statement and my realization that he may very well be facing the death penalty. Terry said he had thought of little else since he got to Springdale where he had so much time to worry. We all agreed that it did not look good that the racket was missing, the police would undoubtedly believe that Terry had disposed of it during his absence.

That was when my phone rang. The display said "TBC" and my heart jumped.  
"What?! What do I do?", I burst out.  
"Pick it up", said Sam, "Act natural".   
I took a deep breath.  
"Hello?"  
"Anna? It's Ralph".  
Sea horse, horse-mouth, mouth breather.  
"Oh hey, RALPH", I said making big eyes at Sam and Dean, "What's new?"  
"Haven't you heard? Are you serious? Are you sick or something, by the way, I haven't seen you around?".  
"Yeah, I... I have the flu?", I panicked a little, "Look, I'm in the middle of something, I'll put you on speaker phone while I finish up, ok?", I said and put my finger to my mouth to caution the others to be silent.  
"So what's up, Ralph?", I went on.  
"I'm sorry, have you been under a rock? Have you been dead? There has been another murder here at TBC! I cannot BELIEVE you have missed this!".  
I lost it.  
"WHAT?!", I nearly screamed and looked at Terry who went deathly pale.  
"I KNOW, right?", Ralph continued in a frenzy, "And hold on to your head, Anna, you won't believe who's been offed this time".  
Did I even want to know?  
"Tell me this instant", I demanded.  
"The Professor".  
Terry and I looked at eachother in disbelief. Sam and Dean looked from me to Terry and back, understanding nothing. 

The Professor wasn't actually a professor, everyone just called him that because he minutely studied successful badminton players allover the world and was constantly working on what he called "The Formula". The formula was the result of mapping out different playing styles and distilling them into one infallable technique that he aimed to learn. This way he was to become the best badminton player through the ages. Ironically, The Professor didn't consider female athletes real athletes and whenever the name "Margaret Southerly" was spoken, he scoffed and made one of a thousand sexist remarks on her various qualities as a player, as a woman and as a person. Ironically, and poetically just, I find, The Professor was an intensely mediocre badminton player. After having all these thoughts rush through my head in less than half a second, his death actually made so much sense I almost smiled. Even Terry didn't look as concerned as before.

"Ernie 'The Professor' Niles?! Are you sure?", I hollered at Ralph on the phone.  
"You better believe it! Strangled as well, just like Carruthers and would you believe it? NO MURDER WEAPON FOUND. This place is a circus. But hey, I gotta go, the cops are ushering us out of TBC. See y-".  
The call was disconnected.

After telling Sam and Dean about The Professor and his formula we all agreed that taking Terry to the police now would serve only the purpose of sending him down the green mile. Two men who hated Terry's mother had been murdered within three days and Terry was still missing as far as the police were concerned, probably along with the assumed murder weapon. So the question was: what the hell do we do now?

Sam and Dean declared that their main priority was to find the hanuted badminton racket of the late Margaret Southerly and destroy it. Terry just sat in his chair, rubbing his temples with his fingertips.  
"I want to help", I said. "Where do we start looking for it?".  
Sam looked defeated.  
"I don't know... TBC maybe?".  
Dean shrugged.  
"As good a place as any, except it will be swarming with uniforms", he added. "Terry, any suggestions?".  
Terry looked up.  
"I'm thinking it's the only place mom is interested in. Except my house, but I'm not there, right? You're the experts, how do poltergeists... I don't know, think? How do they operate, what do they want?".  
"Well", Sam said, "I'm not sure anyone can be an actual expert on a phenomenon as unpredictable as the polstergeist, but we'll tell you what we know". He cleared his throat. "The word 'poltergeist' literally means 'noisy ghost', it's German. Poltergeists differ from a more 'regular' ghost in the sense that where ghosts mostly manifest visually, as apparitions maybe, the poltergeist often causes havoc. They will move, lift, throw things around, they may make knocking or tapping sounds, moan or even scream and their most interesting feature, in my opinion at least, is that they often haunt a person rather than a place".   
Sam watched Terry as he spoke the last phrase. Terry raised his eyebrows.  
"I'll be damned. Is my mom haunting me? I thought she was stuck to the racket?", he asked.  
Sam and Dean gave eachother a look.  
"We're not sure. Every case of poltergeist we've ever come across involves a deeply negative, perhaps even disturbed spirit", Sam went on. "For some reason they're unable to move on from the human world and it's widely believed that the connection is due to some unresolved, remorseful or guilt-filled relationship to a person".  
Terry was silent for a minute, gazing through the window at the cloudy afternoon slowly passing by out there; out there where people still lived their normal lives. Going to work, getting back home, catching trains and eating dinner. The thought of doing trivial things like washing up dishes or even putting on socks seemed so ludicrous now. Finally he sat up straight and said:  
"So we need to destroy the racket. But what if that doesn't work?".  
"Normally we burn the body of the deceased", Dean said, "But your mom was cremated, right?".  
"Yes".  
"Okay, then we go for the racket and we worry about what to do if that doesn't work if in fact that doesn't work. Look, Terry", Dean said in the mildest voice I had heard him use, "It doesn't necessarily need to be you. It could be your sister, Sophia, that's her name right? It could be uncle Bob, a neighbour, the pope, it could be anyone. And if that is the case, we figure it out and we make it right. That's what we do, it's our family business; we save people and we hunt things".   
Terry looked at Dean and gave a breif smile.  
"Okay then", he said. "What's the plan?".

Part 11  
"It's simple, we go to TBC and fetch the racket. Then we throw the racket into a furnace burning at approxiamtely 2750 degrees Fahrenheit and watch it melt. Then we wait to see if there is any more poltergesit activity around you", Dean replied.  
Terry and I looked at eachother. Simple, he says.   
"Okay, great", Terry said, "but what about the cops watching TBC?".  
"Sam will distract them, you've seen how good he looks in a suit. They won't be able to keep their eyes off him", Dean chuckled and elbowed Sam in the side.   
"So...", I closed my eyes and thought about the badminton club building, "Sam gathers and distracts the uniforms at the site while we sneak inside. But breaking in seems too risky, what if they hear us?".  
"We don't have to do that", Terry said.  
We all looked over at him.  
"There's a fire escape that leads up to the roof. Or rather, down from it, I suppose. There's an old disused door up there that is supposedly locked with keys lost in the ocean of time".  
"But the cops should know about that, surely", I protested.  
"Not necessarily, unless they've been up there. See, that door is so disused that it doesn't even connect to another inside anymore, it was removed and bricked up decades ago. The door on the roof leads down into the attic and from the attic there is only a hatch that leads into the vents. And to get out from the vents you have to unscrew a rather large screen door".  
"But wait a minute", I said, "If the door on the roof is locked, then what use is that-"  
"I said supposedly locked", Terry smiled mischieviously, "but actually, it isn't".  
"How do you know all this?", I asked.  
"When I was a kid I used to sneak out late when my mom was off at tournaments and I'd go to TBC after closing time to get some extra practise in. There's never been a security system there and all I needed to do was keep Sophia in the dark to not get caught. She never noticed I was gone".  
Sam, Dean and I all stared at Terry.  
"That was the single most tragic thing I've ever heard", Dean said quietly.  
"Yeah", Terry sighed, "tell me about it".

It was dark when we all finally sat watching the TBC buildning from a distance, the Impala more or less invisibly black. Both Sam and Dean were in their FBI-suits. We figured we may end up needing Dean to cover for us if we were caught or seen. I was more than a little nervous. I had never broken into a building in my life and certainly never to try and find a badminton racket bent on killing people. Terry was surprisingly calm, but then again, he had taken this route into TBC many times before. Still it unnerved me. Here I sat in a car full of men and I was the only one biting my nails. Hunters or no hunters, I thought them positively inhumanly calm.  
"Let's roll", Dean declared, "Sam take the car and park it where they notice you and see you coming. Do you remember your lead?"  
"My colleague and I are out on an ambition- and loyalty-driven spin to all key pleaces of the case to see if we missed anything. My colleague is currently taking a look around the HBC building. Since another murder has occured, we consider it vital that we join forces with the local police service and go that extra mile to catch this killer before he causes more suffering blah blah blah".  
"Good. Anna, Terry, are you ready?".  
"No", we said in unison.  
"Perfect. Here we go".

As Sam drove off in the Impala, the rest of us hurried further into the shadows across the street from TBC. The streetlights were fortunately inadequate and we could move easily without detection. Dean naturally took the lead and Terry and I followed him further down the block until we had passed the TBC building. There we waited until we could se the headlights of the Impala turing into the parking lot of Harsteen's Badminton Club. In the distance we could hear the murmering of voices and that's how we knew Sam was in position.  
"Come on", Dean said and half jogged across the road towards the back alley of TBC, constantly looking around to see if we were being watched. It was late, it was kind of cold, there was no one around. We located the fire escape and started upwards. It creeked and moaned a little under the weight of the three of us and half way up my heart was in my throat. What if the uniforms could hear us? But then I thought, that's what Sam's with them for, right? To distract them, to say things like: "Oh it's only the wind" or "That might be my partner, I sent him around the block to have a look" to explain any strange sounds they may catch. "Let's just trust Sam", I told my thumping heart and tried to remember to breathe.

Once on the roof Dean insisted on peeking over the edge in all directions. He waved us to the front side and made us look down on Sam and the cops standing near the bronze statue of Margaret Southerly, chatting away as if it was just a normal day at work. We all backed away and Dean leaned towards us.  
"See, there's nothing to worry about. Sam's got our backs, okay?".  
Terry and I nodded. I turned around and spotted a door leading into what looked like a shed but was probably a stairwell. The door had been white once upon a time but now the paint hung off it in chunks like withered leaves. Terry went up to it and laid his hand on the handle. Then he took a deep breath and slowly and carefully started pressing it downward. Just as he had predicted it started squeaking and he had to pause several times so as not to make it worse. Finally the handle went all the way down but not before giving up a horrible screech that I was certain must have reached the men down on the ground. Dean snuck over to the edge of the roof and looked down. He came back shaking his head, meaning the had been no reaction. Opening the door was as bad as pressing the handle. The hinges creaked and chirped but Terry patiently pressed it to the side inch by inch. Once inside I slumped down on the stairs while Terry just as patiently closed the door and Dean hurried downwards to scout.  
"There's supposed to be a lightswitch somewhere", Terry whispered and a few seconds later I heard him flipping it. It was pitch black.  
"Guess it doesn't work anymore", I said. "When were you last here?".  
Terry was silent for a second and I could hear his breathing in the dark.  
"Almost 20 years ago".  
"20 years?!" I shout-whispered, "Are you crazy? They may have done just about anything to these spaces and vents in that time, how do you know that we can still even get into the vents from here, let alone the badminton halls?".  
Terry didn't reply at first. I sat there, breathing heavily, wondering what my life would have been like today if I hadn't cared enough about cheating in badminton that I followed a man into a changing room and hid in a locker.  
"I rue the goddamn day", I whispered to myself.  
"What?", Terry asked.  
"Nothing".  
"I guess I didn't think straight", Terry answered at last. "I just really wanted to get in here to find mom's racket. I'm certain it's here. I don't think it's been anywhere else since Carruthers got strangled".   
In the following silence we could hear Dean's steps climbing the stairs and the beam of his torchlight danced around the walls and the ceiling. His head popped up from the level below.  
"What are you doing? Come on. There's no one here but let's be careful anyway".

Part 12  
By the time I had started to despair that we would ever reach the end of the vents that Terry was leading us through, sometimes half running with our backs bent like fishing hooks and sometimes crawling, from out of nowhere appeared a screen door in the wall on the right. Terry took out a screwdriver that we had brought and got to work. 

The stairs that led down from the roof to the attic had been few enough but the the attic itself was a labyrinth, the stale air smelling of wet wood and dust, inside which Terry took the wrong turn twice. We had to double back on ourselves until finally I spotted the old service hatch that led into the vents. The shafts were made of sheet metal and we couldn't move without giving off an echo.  
"There's nothing for it", Terry said, "We can't be silent in here anyway. May as well hurry".  
So we ran, crawled, slithered and shuffled forward, towards the screean door that Terry had now opened up. One by one we shuffled out through the screen door into a cleaning closet and for a second we stood, hands on knees, catching our breaths. Terry and I helped Dean brush the dust off his suit before he opened the door and popped his head out. Nothing but gloomy light and silence. He ushered us into the corridor which led towards the entrance hall. We crept all the way down to where it opened up into the foyer and there we halted. Dean peeked around the corner to see if he could catch a glimpse of Sam and the uniforms outside. Moonlight flooded the entire building and gave a spooky atmosphere to our ridiculous mission, deepening the shadows in the corners and giving everything a hint of blue hue. I turned to look at Terry and nearly jumped, his face was more or less pellucid and his pallor was terrifying. The focus in his expression was unyielding.

"I can't see them", Dean stated, "Sam must have led them off. Right, Terry, where do we go now?".  
Terry didn't reply. Instead he hurried into the playing halls. Dean and I kept our distance, watching him run around searching with his gaze to the ground. After a couple of minutes, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, staring down onto the floor. There, in the back right square of one of the single courts, the racket sat waiting, as if ready to be picked up and put back into use. None of us moved, as if out of fear of scaring it away. I caught myself holding my breath and in the tension of that moment, I reached for Dean's arm. When he felt my hand he looked back at me and put his arm around my shoulder.  
"Come one", he whispered and we slowly made our way towards Terry.

It turned out that Dean had already started to suspect what Terry was planning. I hadn't, and I thought he moved unnecessarily slow but when I took a step further than him him he grabbed my arm and pulled me back. At one point I even felt as if he was actually trying to pull me behind him, holding out his arm in front of my like a rather pointless shield. 

"Terry", Dean said carefully as we made our way towards him. "Terry, I know she was your mother and believe me, I know, the memory of your mom can hurt so badly there are no words to describe the pain. Sometimes it feels as if whatever you have left of her is sacred, a treasure more valuble than any life in the world. But you owe your mother nothing. The racket has to go and it's not your fault".  
Terry didn't say anything, just stood there hanging over the racket like a street lamp whose light has forever gone out.  
"Hey man, listen to me. Look at me Terry, this can end tonight. This whole nightmare can go away, just let me help you. Don't let her voice into your head, she needs to go. This can end right now".  
Terry looked up. The look in his eyes had changed, no longer determined but exhausted, and his voice sounded as if he finally gave up the ghost:  
"I know".

I didn't see the racket leaving the ground, I didn't hear it flying through the air. I felt only a sharp pain as it struck me in the face and before I knew it, I was on my back. I didn't understand what was happening. This tremendous pressure on my throat was suffocating me and I scratched at it to get a hold of it. I was kicking and writhing, trying to get up off the ground but I couldn't move an inch. Terry's and Dean's faces were hovering above me, blurry, their voices far away shouting words I couldn't hear or understand. My vision was darkening and I looked at Dean, grabbing his hand to hold it, to tell him everything was going to be alright.

Only absolutely nothing turned out alright. Except I didn't die, so that's something. I woke up where I had landed on my back, my body heavy and my throat agonizingly sore. Coughing hurt, not coughing hurt even worse. This voice kept saying my name and I wanted to punch the voice in the face, making it shut up and leave me alone. I started waving my arms in the air and before I knew it, I was sitting up, my face inches from Sam's. I just wanted to go back to sleep.  
"Are you okay? Anna?".  
I decided not to punch him, but I couldn't speak either. All that came out was a wheeze so instead I just shook my head and coughed.  
"Okay, come on", he said and lifted me off the ground onto my feet.  
I asked several questions about Dean, Terry, the racket, the uniforms, but absolutely nothing came out.  
"Don't speak. Don't worry, everything is alright. I'll get you to a hospital". Within seconds, I was unconscious again.

Part 13  
The moment I opened my eyes and saw the look on Dean's face, I just knew. I knew that Terry was gone, I knew that we had failed miserably and that we hadn't helped him in the least. We may very well have made everything worse. My throat didn't hurt as bad and I had less trouble breathing. I tried to sit up but Dean pushed me back into the hospital bed.   
"Don't. Just... rest". 

Harsteen's General Hospital, I guessed. Looking out the window I could see tree tops and clouds. What day is it? The question remained unasked in my injured throat. I had to know what had happened to Terry but I wasn't sure whether I could face it. At this point, I didn't even know whether it was him or Margaret Southerly who was controlling that goddamn racket when it attacked me. I didn't know if Terry had decided to keep or destroy the racket. My eyes were tearing up and I didn't care. The crying started to burn in my throat and the pain was terrific, but I didn't care. I just wanted to fall back into unconsciousness and never wake up again.

Instead, Dean started telling me what had happened after I passed out. Finally, after screaming his lungs out, cursing his mother to one level of hell after the other, Terry somehow managed to lift the racket off my throat and before Dean had time to react, he ran off. Dean had to stay and make sure I was at least barely alive before he too up and left. Terry had run straight out the front entrance, instantly alerting the uniforms who took up the chase. Dean, coming after him, hollered at Sam to go take care of me while he went after Terry. As he belted towards the Impala, he caught a glimpse of Terry turning a corner in what Dean assessed to be the general direction of his house.

It was still dark out, dawn was few hours away. But the peaceful silence of Harsteen, South Dakota was gutted that night by the revving of car engines and the wailing of police sirens. Dean headed towards Terry's neighbourhood, hoping to intercept him before he reached it – and his mother's car. But Dean wasn't familiar with Harsteen and as much as he remembered Terry's address from the information he got at the police station, 742 Evergreen Terrace, he didn't know exactly where that was. It was in the North West of the Lorraine district, it was a house, it was green. Hoping against hope for some luck, Dean turned into an area he thought likely to be Terry's and started his slow recognisance in the dark. Black house after black house passed by outside the windows. It seemed to Dean like he had been slowly creeping down the same lane for an eternity when, whether by luck or divine intervention, he saw the red shine of a reverse light in the corner of his eye. He backed up and just caught the sound of the car engine roaring and he knew he was on Terry's tail. 

Following Terry driving a car was almost as difficult as following him running. Terry knew every backstreet, every turn, every exit lane. Terry knew he was being followed and probably figured that it wasn't the police judging by the lack of blue lights and sirens. He turned this way and that, ran red lights and made U-turns allover the city. Dean struggled to keep up and sometimes he feared he had lost Terry but still managed to take the right turn enough times to catch up again. Finally Terry seemed to accept his pursuer and made for the highway heading west, leading out of the city. Dean got so close to Terry now that he very nearly made it all the way up along side him. Then there was a single lane stretch, and after that a stream of vehicles climbed onto the highway via several connecting ramps and before Dean knew it, Terry started to slip away. And then suddenly, on the other side of a hill in an intersection, almost 15 minutes outside the city, Dean finally lost sight of the backlights of Margaret Southerly's car and with them, Terry.

I was breathing heavily now, ignoring the excruciating pain in my throat. I imagined Dean's face as he drifted around the highways in the dark, romaing an unknown territory, searching for a man he barely knew, knowing in his heart the chase had been in vain. He knew then as surely as I knew now, that Terry was lost. All he could to was go back to Harsteen, go back to the presinct and report his activities to the officer in charge, all the while keeping up his FBI-character. As Dean explained to the officer which way Terry was going when he lost sight of him, the officer's face sank and his expression became absent.

"They're dragging East Vermilion Lake as we speak", Dean said silently.  
I charged a question at him with my eyes and he heard it.  
"Yes. Yes, I think he's down there". 

And as if Dean could read my mind, he started answering the questions that were burning in my head. Of course the police had Terry's house under surveilence since he disappeared, but as it turned out, that's not where he kept the car. It sat in a neighbour's carport since 4 years. So when Terry belted all the way across Harsteen to take the racket away in the car, he only came within a block's proximity of his own house. The police hadn't actually bothered locating that car because in fact, the car wasn't even registered on Terry since Sophia was the one who inherited it. As things stood now, the cops weren't certain whether Sophia cared or even knew about the car. She had made no claim on it. Dean and Sam thought it likely that heads were going to roll at the police station about the car not having been properly saught after. 

"They contacted Sophia when Terry went missing. Yet they don't seem to have discussed the car with her", Sam filled in.  
"All we can do now is wait", said Dean and the Winchesters walked out of the hospital and left me to my unspeaking puzzling.

Part 14  
In spite of Harsteen being so close to Sioux Falls, consequently breaking the heart of Dean Winchester, the brothers stuck around to help me tie up some loose ends after the second disappearance of Terry Southerly. The first loose end to be tied up turned out to be Terry himself. Sam informed me with my hand lost in his baseball glove that the cops had found the late Margaret Southerly's car on the bottom of East Vermillion Lake at 6.03 AM on the fifth day following the murder of Mr Carruthers the janitor. In the trunk of the car they found the late Margaret Southerly's old badminton racket, tangled in chains of various sizes and weighed down onto the floor of the trunk by a screw-jack. In the driver's seat they found the late Terry Southerly. Despite Dean aldready having told me that Terry probably had driven himself and the racket into that lake, it still took my a few minutes to process this. The finality of it. That Terry was no more.

My voice had slowly started to come back to me after having been strangled halfway to death, so I asked them if they thought it was all over now, or will Margaret Southerly strike again? The Winchesters both thought it unlikely. Dean, who had watched Terry pull the murderous racket off my throat, had formed a theory as to how he could suddenly have managed that when it was so impossible to save Mr Carruthers in an identical situation.

"I think Terry had been contemplating suicide for a long time and when he failed to save Mr Carruthers, and then spent all those hours alone in the lodge over in Springdale, I think he decided to go through with it. When you called him there and offered not just some sort of diffuse support, but actual help and genuine understanding, it was like a lifeline to him. There was a spark of hope now. But as we talked about how to destroy the racket, I think Terry came to the conclusion that racket or no racket, poltergeist or no poltergeist, he was always going to be haunted by his mother, to the end of his days. Not only by her memories but also by the murder he had witnessed and failed to prevent. The final straw was the attack on you. The poltergeist of Margaret Southerly may very well have perceived the energy that Terry was emanating towards you. He loved you, Anna. Not necessarily romantically, but think about it. You were the only person who had reached out to him in years. You had become extremely important to Terry Southerly in a very short time. Overbearing poltergeist mom wouldn't have it – you had to go. Cue strangulation. So how did Terry manage to stop her this time? I think he gave up his resistance towards his mother. I think he offered himself up as a haunting ground. To save you, he invited his mother's poltergeist to take up house in his heart and this is what she had wanted all along. But he was strong, see. You wouldn't think so just looking at him, but he managed to stay in control of both himself and her long enough to do what he had decided to do before we had even opened the door on the roof of the HBC building – kill himself. I tried to talk him out of it. I tried to turn his focus onto his mother's responsibility for all that has happened, but Terry could see no future for himself in this world. To him, his life was over anyway, may as well take his mother's ghost with him. Honestly, I think Terry took the racket with him down into the lake just to make doubly sure. He hoped nobody would find them there but thanks to you, Anna, there have been people searching for him for 5 days. Thanks to you, Terry was a person whose whereabouts mattered. Thanks to you, during the last 5 days of his life, Terry mattered".

After almost a full hour of crying I started to calm down. I wondered if The Professor had been killed because he was an actual threat to Terry's hypothetical career or if that was revenge on Margaret Southerly's part. Sam and Dean couldn't say, but it make sense that she killed him seeing as how there was some extremely negative energy between the two of them. What was going to happen to Terry's house and all his stuff? The Winchesters' contacts within the police service informed them that Sophia was the sole beneficiary of Terry Southerly's will and she had started to clear everything up.

Dean and Sam went on to tell me that as far as the police service of Harsteen, South Dakota was concerned, the case was clear as crystal. They interpreted Terry's apparent suicide, and the simultaneous drowning of Margaret Southerly's badminton racket, as a confession and an explanation for his actions. He had been so greif-stricken and disturbed by his mother's death, that he had felt a violent need to curate her memory and her legacy. By the logic of the insane, Terry had then proceeded to take the lives of two men he knew would carry with them unfounded hate for Margaret Southerly into the future. He couldn't have them spreading their negative image of her and thus they had to die. I expressed my concern that Sophia had been given this account and the Winchester confirmed that she had.  
"I don't want her to believe this about her brother", I said. Sam replied:  
"I know. You could tell her the truth and hope that she believes you. But she won't and you will have achieved nothing but make it worse for her".  
I buried my face in my hands.  
"I know".

I know.

Part 15  
I was dead on my feet by the time a week had passed since Terry's death. I went to his funeral while Sam and Dean were packing their things to go back home. They came over to my place after and as we sat at my kitchen table I couldn't help but thank them again for everything they had done.  
"Don't thank us, you and Terry did all the work", Sam replied.  
I felt my eyelides getting heavier as I looked around my kitchen.  
"I don't know what I'm going to do", I sighed. "I can't seem to get anything done. I'm just too tired. I can't believe mom did this for a living for so many decades. One week and I'm done".  
Dean raised his eyebrows.  
"Well, the life definitely isn't a walk in the park but on the other hand you don't get strangled by a badminton racket every week".  
"It's not just that", I went on. "I'm drained, like... what is that Bilbo says? 'Thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread'. I'm just done, man".

So instead of leaving me at home, the Winchesters unceremoniously stuffed me in the backseat of the Impala and drove off towards their home.  
"You can hang out at our place for a while. We have some reading material about poltergeists and such that you may find interesting", Dean chirped from the front.  
"Some?", Sam asked with a tone. "Are we talking about the library or the archives at the bunker right now?".  
"Library or archive?", I nearly spat, sitting up straight in the back. "You have both a library and an archive?  
Dean laughed.  
"You my friend", he said and peered at me in the rearview mirror, "are going to loooove the bunker".

 

THE END


End file.
